There’s a strange peace that resides in my heart as I contemplate the twenty years that have passed since I lost my mum. For eighteen of them, I had my dad right by me as a stalwart. Now I miss him alongside missing her, though her passing is further away than his, and his absence is the one that’s catching me off-guard. I’ve had twenty years to get used to mum’s absence.
As I feel a sense of grief over what I’ve lost with my mum, and now, my dad too, the biggest realization that dawns on me is that I am grieving the loss of something good. This is poignant. Not everyone has this grace. There may be grief, but it could be wrapped in guilt, for instance. I am so grateful to God that I don’t have that pain.
I’m terribly aware too of how the loss of my mum impacted my life. It was all such a shock. I think that’s the bit that really takes me back.
One minute I was getting ready to head out for a movie with a friend and the next I was calling to cancel not because too much was wrong but that mum was feeling a little unwell and we wanted to get her to hospital.
Even in hospital, there was nothing to worry about. Not until they did a CT scan. Then we were told she had about six hours to live.
My mum lasted more than those six hours, but not much more. It was excruciating waiting around and when she drew her last breath, it was surreal.
The whole thing happened so suddenly. I think I never saw it coming. It also makes me so appreciative of my father’s attempts to remove shock from his passing, as he tried to talk to me about it some years before he died.
This loss made it necessary for me to make a career pivot. In a work related blog, I wrote that these days career transitions are trendy.
When I lost my mum, I was living out my ambition of being a court-going lawyer, which I’d held since I was six years old. I loved my work. I still love that time I had in the practice. I speak of it with enthusiasm and fondness.
However, love for my work alone wasn’t enough. Grief took over. I needed an out. My dad stood by me.
Papa even pulled people off my back. So many felt it in their place to tell me to get a grip, that I was wasting the education my parents put me through, etcetera. It made me retreat from so many people. I was exhausted by them.
Over the years, I have at points had comments about how I never went on to pursue the law properly. How I’d held so much promise but … that sentence almost always ends with a shaking of the head.
I’m thankful to Jesus for the reminder of how his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11: 28-30).
Jesus’ call to rest and talk about the ease of his yoke and lightness of his burden comes at the end of a fraught chapter. Disciples of John the Baptist come to find out if he’s the one they’ve been waiting for. Then he launches into a validation of John the Baptist and ends by denouncing unrepentant cities.
We rightly understand this to be his rejection of religious burdens placed on people. Do such and such to be saved or gain blessing. Submission to Jesus isn’t a religious ritual.
Submission happens in our hearts and then gets lived out in our lives.
There are huge takeaways from this – not just in terms of how I submit to God. My submission is constantly something I’m needing to work at.
In the beginning, after losing my mum, I worried about how I wasn’t able to build that huge corporate future. I worried about the lack of respect I received after leaving legal practice.
It took me a long time to understand that it was ultimately my identity in Christ that mattered and not the respect of the world. It helped me change perspective and reframe things.
Reframing is amazing. I saw that I needed to make changes and I did. These pivots take into account my broken heart.
In the last two years, my heart broke again – with the loss of my dad. I’m needing to make pivots as a result of that. But my lesson in transitions started twenty years ago through the loss of my mother and the support of my father.
I don’t thank God enough. I want to thank him as I end this. I thank him so much for my mum and I remember her so clearly and so deeply and I love and miss her so. I thank God for my dad. It’s still raw with his recent passing and I’m still needing to make adjustments but I’m grateful for having had him for as long as I did. I love and miss him too.
I’m thanking God for this grief over the last twenty years, for the journey it has brought me on and for the pivots I’ve had to make. I thank him for the people who came into my life as a result of the different paths I ended up taking. I thank him too for the experiences I’ve had as a result of change.
I’d love it if my home (me, papa, and mummy) was still the same. Even writing that sentence brings tears to my eyes. It’s not possible for things to go back.
Twenty years is a long time to be without someone you love. For eighteen of them I had my father. So weird to be without either now. But I trust in God’s promise for the future.
Grace for the soul 
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